6. An end to HDCP
Apple's secretive implementation of High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) has been messy, causing all kinds of problems for Mac users who find that their iTunes downloads won't work with their old displays yada, yada.
Of course, Jobs has good reason to pursue the status quo, thanks to his interest in Disney and his wooing of Hollywood over iTunes downloads, but he's also been very vocal about copy protection as it has been applied to music - and needs to be so again.
At the end of the day, copy protection drives paying punters towards piracy, not against it - and Jobs is powerful enough, and bolshie enough, to call for this unloved 'feature' to be scrapped. Ditto, regional coding, btw.
7. Blu-ray support
Talking of which... we know that Blu-ray has been a "bag of hurt" for Jobs and co., but it's acutely embarrassing that Apple still doesn't support the format 18 months after HD DVD went the way of the Dodo.
There have been hints that Blu-ray support is coming, as Apple Insider noted in the credits for iTunes 8.2.
WWDC 2009 gives Apple a prime opportunity to sell the very many virtues of Blu-ray to the Mac faithful, while also rolling out support for the format in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and across its range of computing hardware.
Heck, we're at the stage where Apple should be offering Blu-ray recording as standard - just as it did with DVDs and iDVD back in the day.
8. Apple TV done right
Apple needs to rid Apple TV of its 'hobby' status and finally deliver a product that all of us can buy into: it has to support legacy TVs (not everyone in the world has an HDMI flat-panel TV yet), build in Blu-ray playback; include a built-in digital TV tuner and even allow HD recording.
The hardware, software and desire are already out there; all Apple needs to due is to harness them and dream up its own easy-to-use PVR-style user interface. It can't be that hard - Elgato's been doing something similar for years.
9. A coherent App Store licensing strategy
It's obvious to anyone who's been following Apple's efforts so far that the company is all at sea when it comes to licensing apps for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Quality control has fallen through the floor: Apple has approved - and then been forced to scrap and/or apologise for some truly questionable apps; and it's no clearer to developers or end users what kind of programs are likely to be approved, or when they're likely to make their App Store debut.
It beggars belief that genuinely useful apps like SlingPlayer for iPhone still aren't available, when useless crap like boob-jiggling and farting apps are.
10. The kind of Apple hardware that makes you want to drop a credit card bomb
Since Jobs' hiatus, Apple has been held in an understandable holding pattern that's been long on tweaks and upgrades, and short on true innovation.
At this stage we don't really care whether its a stunning new design for the Mac Pro, a flying iMac or even a premium-priced netbook or Apple games console - what we want is something that'll a) restore faith in Apple's ability to make the impossible easy; and/or b) wow us with something so spectacularly innovative, exciting and new that we won't mind mortaging the kids and living on lentils for the next five years to get our hands on it.
Apple pulled it off in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone. It would be awesome to think that Apple could do so again.
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